The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (16 page)

‘Inspector, I couldn’t be sorrier.’

‘Thanks, but this is no time for sentiment. Now, men,’ he said, gauging the strength of each one, ‘if we follow Don’s suggestion and use his coat as a stretcher, I think we can get the Colonel back home without worsening his condition. Farrar, help me roll him over – softly, softly does it –
softly
, I say. Don, you look as though you’re the strongest of the three of us, so why don’t you pick up your coat from the other end? That’s right – good, good – but take care you keep it from swinging too much. It’s not a hammock. Farrar, you and I will take him from this end.’

‘What about me?’ asked Evadne Mount. ‘What can I do?’

‘You? You’re going to be our guide. We’ll really need a guide, so keep your mind and your eyes focused on the way ahead. Here – take my torchlight as well as your own and direct them both at your feet. If you observe any hump, any bump, any ridge, any kind of concavity, anything at all we should look out for, make whatever detour you have to and we’ll follow suit. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘Now. Everyone knows what he’s got to do? Okay. One – two – three – all together!’

Then, with a wave of his hand, like the boss of a wagon train, he cried out:

‘Lead on, Evadne Mount!’

So it was that our dolorous little procession forged its slow and solemn path across the snow-mantled moors.

It seems that Mary ffolkes had chosen to ignore Dr Rolfe’s recommendation that she remain in a reclining position until the search party’s arrival home. Or else, more likely, knowing her, she had at the very last minute been alarmed by a cry from Selina – who at her mother’s request had stationed herself at the french window in order to catch the earliest possible glimpse of the Colonel’s return – and then leapt up to discover what had occasioned it. Whichever it was, the poor woman must have witnessed the funereal spectacle of her husband being borne across the moors on an improvised stretcher and, having assumed the worst, as loved ones inevitably do, simply fainted away. For, when the Colonel was finally transported into the drawing-room and his comatose body eased on to the sofa, Rolfe was already in the process of administering the smelling-salts.

Realising that nothing could more quickly and effectively snap her out of her fit than to be told that her husband’s
condition wasn’t as terminal as she believed, Trubshawe all but elbowed Rolfe aside to give her the glad news.

‘Mrs ffolkes, can you hear me? I say, can you hear me, Mrs ffolkes?’

Half-raising her eyelids, baring eyes that were filmy with shock and grief, Mary ffolkes peered into his rough and ready features.

‘Roger? Is he …?’

‘No, Mrs ffolkes. He isn’t dead, if that’s what you were going to ask me. I won’t keep it from you. He’s in pretty bad shape. But he isn’t dead and he isn’t about to die.’

The effect was instantaneous. Her eyes appeared suddenly alive again, as though re-energised by a surge of electricity, and she even tried to sit up, though she was gently prevented in that by the policeman.

‘So he’s going to be all right?’ she murmured.

‘Yes, Mrs ffolkes, he’s going to be all right,’ said Trubshawe, lighting his pipe for the first time in anybody’s memory as he bent over her. He took a deep puff and exhaled the smoke with a pleasure all the purer for having been so long delayed. ‘That’s why I want to make sure you’ll be all right too – for his sake. He’s going to need you now more than he’s ever needed you.’

‘But I don’t understand. You tell me he’s in a bad way. What’s happened to him? What happened out there?’

The apprehension etched on Trubshawe’s face no doubt reflected the internal dialogue he was now conducting with
himself. Should he tell her or not? Did this good, simple, God-fearing woman have the physical and mental stamina to learn about the cause of the Colonel’s condition? Or would it be better for her state of mind if he concealed from her (but for how long?) the fact that some as yet unknown individual’s desire to be forever rid of her husband had actually prompted him or her to commit the very worst of crimes?

He took the plunge.

‘Well, Mrs ffolkes, it’s also my regretful duty to inform you – but, if I do, it’s because I’ve a shrewd hunch you’re a strong enough woman to hear this – that someone tried to murder the Colonel.’

Mary ffolkes sat up with a start. So much so, she had to be held back by Cynthia Wattis, who had been dabbing at her friend’s fevered brow with a handkerchief.

‘What? Someone murder Roger? Oh no, no, no! It can’t be! You must be mistaken!’

‘I’m afraid not. It was no accident. He was shot at.’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘Fortunately, his assailant wasn’t the shot he imagined he was. Or the distance was just too great. Or p’raps there was too much doom and gloom out there on the moors for him to take proper aim at his target. In any event, the bullet passed through your husband’s shoulder and, thank God, there’s no obvious sign that any lasting damage has been done.’

‘But we’ve got to get him to a doctor! Immediately!’

‘You’re forgetting, Mrs ffolkes. We have a doctor among us. Dr Rolfe here. He’s with your husband as we speak, and I’m sure he’ll know what has to be done.’

Throughout their exchange the Doctor had indeed been examining the still-unconscious Roger ffolkes, placing an ear to his heart, as Trubshawe had already done, while simultaneously taking his pulse. And once his diagnosis was complete, he came across the room and stood at the Chief-Inspector’s side.

‘Well?’ said Trubshawe.

‘Well,’ replied Rolfe, ‘even if none of the important organs was touched, he’s had a terrific shock to his system. A man of his age, you know … But, Mary, do let me assure you. Roger had the – I mean, has – Roger
has
the constitution of an ox and – well, as you know, I ruined my life on account of one stupid, tragic blunder, but I can promise you now, I can absolutely promise you, he’s going to pull through.’

‘Thank heaven for that! And thank you, Chief-Inspector, and you other men too, Don, Farrar, Evie, for having brought him back to me safe and sound. Well, anyway’ – and if for no more than an instant, her distress was tempered by one of those half-apologetic half-smiles of hers, the only ones she ever half-permitted herself – ‘if not as sound as he might be, then at least safe. I shall be eternally grateful.’

‘Oh, Mary,’ cried Cynthia Wattis, ‘how very courageous you are, refusing to crack! But then, that’s the sort of person you’ve always been.’

‘Don’t delude yourself, Cyn,’ answered the Colonel’s wife. ‘I’m anything but courageous. To tell the truth, I’m actually shedding buckets of tears. If you can’t see them, it’s because, a long, long time ago, I learned how to channel those tears down the inside of my cheeks. It’s an art we women have to master.’

‘My dear,’ said Evadne Mount, ‘in my book, crying on the inside is the very definition of courage!’

Whereupon the novelist turned to the Chief-Inspector and, like a quick-change artiste, abruptly switched both style and subject-matter.

‘I say, Trubshawe,’ she boomed, ‘since I’m not needed here, you wouldn’t have any objection to my popping up to my bedroom to change? I’ll catch my death if I don’t get into some warm indoor clothes.’

‘No, no – go, do. Take your time,’ the Chief-Inspector carelessly replied, not a little relieved to be delivered, even temporarily, from the inhibitive presence of his brilliant but provoking rival.

‘Tell me, Doctor,’ he then asked, ‘what’s to be done with the Colonel? Dare we move him into his own bed? I mean, until the weather lets up and we can get him to a hospital.’

‘I’d certainly prefer to see him in a proper bed if possible. Mary,’ said Rolfe to the Colonel’s wife, ‘I presume you’ve got a fire going in your bedroom?’

‘Oh yes. By now it ought to be quite toasty warm.’

‘Then I propose we carry him up, undress him and put him to bed. After I patch him up, I’ll give him a shot which should knock him out. What he needs now is calm and lots of undisturbed sleep.’

Trubshawe gave the Doctor a meaningful look.

‘A shot, you say, Rolfe?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Precisely what sort of a shot?’

‘Oh, a small dose of morphine. I always have some on me. It’s perfectly harmless. Just enough to –’

But before Rolfe could say another word, the Chief-Inspector had turned his unfinished sentence into an unfinished question. The change was one of intonation only, but the implication was radically different.

‘Just enough to …?’

Rolfe visibly bristled.

‘Just enough to put him to sleep for several hours, was what I was going to say. But, look here, Trubshawe, why are you asking me these questions? What is it you’re insinuating?’

‘Am I insinuating something?’

‘I would say you are. I would say you’re insinuating that I’m not competent to tend to Roger.’

‘Not at all. I have as much faith as anyone in your medical skills.’

‘Then what is the meaning of this unwarranted questioning
of my methods and – and, specifically, of the medication I wish to prescribe?’

For the first time since arriving at ffolkes Manor, the man from Scotland Yard seemed to be caught short for a suitable riposte. He puffed two or three times on his pipe before answering his interlocutor.

‘Rolfe,’ he said in a guarded tone, ‘I’m here, as you know, in an unofficial capacity. I’m here, basically, because you all requested me to be here. You yourself, moreover, were the person who came to fetch me. Informal as my investigation has necessarily had to be, I did insist from the beginning that, if it was to be conducted at all, it would have to be conducted in accordance with the – well, with what I like to think of as the immemorial practices in application at the Yard.

‘Now, it’s a fact – a fact you’ve all had to come to terms with – that almost all of you are potential suspects in the murder of Raymond Gentry. In the light of what’s just occurred, however, the case has taken on a whole new dimension, one whose significance none of you seems so far to have grasped.’

‘A new dimension?’ said Cora Rutherford.

‘Well, Miss, just think about it. Since, as far as I can surmise, the attempt on the Colonel’s life took place when all of you were in your rooms – and, yes, you don’t have to remind me, I know quite well that, for what it’s worth, you married couples all can and doubtless all will vouch for
each other’s presence during that period – but since, as I say, it took place when you were all out of sight, then almost all of you must equally be considered suspects in the attempted murder of Roger ffolkes.’

‘But that’s preposterous, quite preposterous!’ exploded Rolfe. ‘What is it you’re suggesting? That one of us toddled up to our bedroom then at once slipped out of the house again in the howling snowstorm and took a potshot at the Colonel?’

‘Somebody, Doctor,
somebody
took a potshot at the Colonel. Surely you would agree it could hardly have been other than the same somebody, the same fiendishly clever somebody, who took a potshot at Raymond Gentry inside a locked attic room?’

Since nobody seemed to have any plausible counter-argument to offer, he took their silence as meaning that they did all agree and continued:

‘Now – to come back to what’s to be done about the Colonel’s present condition. Here we have you, Rolfe, one of the potential suspects – no more, I grant you, but also no less than anybody else in this room – here we have you telling me, cool as you please, that you’d like to have him carried up to his bedroom, where you would then give him an injection. That of course sounds all very right and proper, except that, as you must see, it would scarcely be advisable for me, even under circumstances as extraordinary as these, to let one of the suspects in a murder case inject some unknown fluid into the body of one of the murderer’s victims.
Especially as the very first question I shall naturally want to put to the Colonel when he regains consciousness is whether he
saw
and, more to the point,
recognised
his assailant.

‘Answer me, Doctor,’ he said imperiously. ‘In your opinion as a professional man, just as I am in my own field, am I being unreasonable?’

Rolfe appeared initially to be on the point of making a protest. But when he did reply, it was in his usual cold, calm voice.

‘No, Trubshawe, you aren’t being unreasonable, save in a single respect.’

‘And what is that?’

‘You yourself have just described the person who murdered Gentry and – we must assume – also tried to murder the Colonel as a fiendishly clever fellow. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Now, I ask you, how clever would it be of me to announce to all of you here – including a retired Scotland Yard detective – that I was going to give Roger a harmless injection then actually proceed to give him a lethal one? If anything were then to happen to the Colonel, as surely you can see, instead of a nice, juicy array of suspects, there’d be only one – yours truly.’

‘Quite so,’ said Trubshawe, ‘quite so. That’s exactly what I expected you to say. And it’s a line of argumentation I have just one problem with.

‘Not being a medical man myself, I would never be able to prove – to
prove
, Dr Rolfe, for where the law is concerned suspicion is nothing without proof – that such an injection was in fact responsible for inducing the – well, let’s say the seeming heart attack to which the Colonel might later succumb.

‘If a fatal heart attack
were
the outcome, it would of course look very bad for you. But, I repeat, I myself don’t know enough about these matters to be sure that such an effect could positively and conclusively be traced back to such a cause. And, frankly, I don’t fancy finding myself in that position, even though I’m here in an informal capacity. My duty hasn’t changed, and I’d be derelict in that duty if I simply said to you, yes, go ahead, give him the shot, do as you think best. I’m sorry, but you must see the position I find myself in.’

Rolfe pondered this for a few minutes, glanced over at the Colonel lying stretched out on the couch, insensible to the argument which was raging about him, then once more addressed the Chief-Inspector.

‘Yes, that all makes sense. But I too find myself in an awkward position. Whatever may be your doubts and misgivings, Trubshawe, I know what’s right for my patient, and Roger is, and has been for many years, my patient, not yours. He must – I repeat, he
must
– be given morphine at once. If not, I cannot answer for the consequences. There might at the very least be a dangerously
prolonged reaction to the physiological
and
psychological shock he’s already suffered.’

He turned to Mary ffolkes, who had been intently following the debate.

‘Mary, my dear,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to leave the decision in your hands.’

‘My hands?’

‘The question is – do you trust me?’

‘Trust you? Well, I … well, of course … Of course I trust you, Henry. You know I do.’

‘No,’ said Rolfe unexpectedly.

‘No? But I just said yes.’

‘No, Mary, I’m afraid that, in this case, that kind of hesitantly polite nod of approval isn’t enough.’

‘Oh dear, why must everything be so complicated?’

‘Answer me yes or no, Mary,’ said Rolfe. ‘Do you trust me to give Roger the injection I’m convinced he needs if we hope to prevent an adverse metabolic reaction?’

Even though the look Mary ffolkes afforded him, one born of a long friendship, had already soundlessly answered his question, she also said in a voice designed to dispel any further doubt: